Alraune
by Mimic Teruyo
Summary: Not all outsiders cross the border intact...


_**Alraune**_

* * *

The first thing I noticed when I woke up, before I opened my eyes, was a sweet, hypnotising, flowery scent that overwhelmed my senses.

Something was amiss, I could tell right away. It wasn't a bad feeling, per se, but definitely odd: it was as if someone had stuffed my head full of cotton scented with wild flowers. Which flowers, I wasn't quite certain. Lilacs? Irises? It was difficult to think, and despite my uncertain predicament an overwhelming desire to return to sleep kept pushing me back beyond the surface. I didn't want the soft warm feeling to go away just yet.

After several more minutes, when the nagging feeling of something being wrong wouldn't go away no matter how hard I tried to smother it, I finally decided to wake up for real. I still couldn't open my eyes in my sluggish state, but I slowly became more aware of my surroundings.

I was lying on my back on soft grass, with no sound to be heard save for a gentle breeze occasionally washing over me. Which was very odd, really, seeing that I had no recollection of ever falling asleep in a place like this.

Come to think of it, what had I been doing?

I forced my eyes open only to quickly snap them shut again as sunshine beamed directly into my poor unsuspecting retinae. Still, I managed to catch a glimpse of white flowers. On my next attempt, I got a much clearer picture of my strange temporary bed: nothing but lilies-of-the-valley as far as the eye could see, a sea of green and white, tear-like dewdrops glistening on their leaves.

I stared at them, still lying down, trying to figure out where on earth I could be. I had never seen a flower field like this before, that was for sure. How had I even ended up here?

I closed my eyes and sighed, trying to reminisce about what had happened before I had fallen asleep. My memories were muffled by the cotton in my brain, distant and unreal. I kept digging, and finally found something concrete: a familiar mental image of a railway station on a rainy morning. That had to be it.

* * *

_Left, right, avoid the group of office workers, keep moving, go around the giggling middle schoolers, don't step in the puddle, ignore the stares, you can still make it, run run run..._

_I keep wading through the crowd that gathers at the station every single morning, pulling the hood of my red cardigan more securely over my head to shield me from the relentless rain. I am late, just like I am on every other morning of my miserable life, and can already hear my home room teacher's scoldings ringing in my ears. The others look askance at me, but I don't care._

_I sigh mentally. It hadn't meant to oversleep, I never do, no matter what my home room teacher keeps telling me. I really tried to wake up on time: I bought the loudest alarm clock I could find, and made sure to set it every single night. Problem is, not even the piercing beeps of the accursed thing are enough to rouse me on most mornings._

_Thing is, I am unable to fall asleep at will. On most nights, regardless of how early I turn in, I won't actually slip into unconsciousness until the wee hours of the morning. Is it then a wonder that when the blasted alarm clock rings at seven thirty to greet me into another day, I'm still so groggy that as soon as I get the thing silent I turn around and fall into reverie once more? I don't know why it's like this, but it's always been so: some of my earliest memories are of peeking through the curtains down at the empty streets bathing in moonlight._

_So, you can imagine why I roll my eyes at Mr. Moriyama when he suggests I go to bed earlier in the evening if I'm so tired all the time, and get sent into detention for disrespecting him._

_Still, all isn't lost today. I can still catch my train. I leave the cover of the archway and swerve towards the platform..._  
_And crash right into another commuter and fall to the ground. A splash and a wet sensation being absorbed through my school uniform tell me I landed in one of the many puddles riddling the concrete. Fantastic. At least I didn't break any bones._

_The person I crashed into hadn't as much as budged despite the impact, like they were a concrete wall, and even as I was still seeing stars I could feel their gaze boring down on me._

_"I'm sorry..." I begin and look up, only to freeze as soon as I see exactly what sort of person I had run into. She is a foreigner, taller than any woman I have ever seen, with long blonde hair and a knowing smirk on her face. She looks so strange and out of place, standing there in an elegant nightgown and holding a parasol in the middle of a full station with dimly-clad people scurrying around. It almost looks like she was glowing. The strangest of all, no-one else seems to pay her any attention._

_And when I get back on my feet, she smiles at me. It's a wide smile, with more than a little mischief. My stomach churns._

_"I'm very sorry," I repeat, then say the same in English just in case. She doesn't react to either phrase, but keeps her gaze directly on my eyes. I look away. I really don't want to meet it._

_I remember the train and scramble on my feet. "I'm terribly sorry, but I must hurry." I give her a quick bow and turn to leave._

_But my feet won't move._

_"I wonder..." the mysterious woman looks at me, her finger on her chin, her head tilted, and an amused smile on her face. "If I were to tell you your life is going to change forever, what would you do?"_

_"Huh?" It wasn't that I didn't understand her: her Japanese was impeccable. It were the words that made no sense._

_Her grin widens._

_And then..._

* * *

I rubbed my forehead. No matter how hard I struggled, I couldn't remember more. After that, the next thing in my memory was waking up here, wherever I was.

Had I just imagined the whole thing? It couldn't be: something must have happened for me to end up on this flower field. But what? And why?

There were all these questions, and yet I couldn't bring myself to really care at this moment. I felt so comfortable just lying there. While there was little sun directly on me, the sunny air felt like the warmest blanket, and the grass I was lying on was miraculously soft. In fact, I was just thinking about drifting back to sleep and when my back started to itch. It felt like there was something stuck to it.

I slowly reopened my eyes and raised my hand to rub my forehead again. I blinked. Even if my memories were moving as slowly as molasses, I was pretty sure I hadn't been wearing green bracelets when I last checked.

"Huh?"

Something was wrong with my voice; it was way too high-pitched. I let my hand drop on my chest and felt some sort of a ribbon attached to my clothes.

I forced myself into a sitting position and took a better look of what I was wearing. I was in a white and green dress with a bell-shaped skirt, decorated with a light green ribbon on the front. My feet were bare save for an anklet on my left leg and when I reached out to grab my hair, I discovered wavy green locks with small white flowers interwoven to them.

_What the hell?_

I touched my face. It felt completely different too, a lot smoother and smaller. Now that I thought of it, my hands were a lot smaller as well.

Finally, I reached out and touched the itch on my back. I quickly pulled my hand away as I felt something filmy and fragile that definitely hadn't been there before. I summoned up my courage and touched the thing again, carefully pulling whatever it was into my field of vision. It looked like translucent fabric, framed with dark green vines. I finally registered it as a wing. When I concentrated, I could actually move it, and realised there was another one too.

There was only one obvious conclusion.

I had become a fairy.

How was that even possible? Fairies don't exist. And I'm a human. Humans don't just randomly transform into other creatures, especially not into ones that don't exist.

I jumped on my feet, and immediately regretted it: my vision blurred and I fell on my knees due to light-headedness.

There had to be some other explanation to what was going on. Maybe I was drunk? Or High? I neither drank nor did drugs. Maybe the lady had given me something unsavoury, and I had simply forgotten about it. At least substance abuse and hallucinations would explain my headache and the weird things going on around me. More than this all being reality, anyway.

Standing up attempt #2 proved to be more successful than the first. It still felt like a stubborn little smith was hammering away inside my skull, but at least I could get on my feet and look around without fainting.

I appeared to be standing in a valley on a large hill, maybe even a mountain. The entire valley was teeming with lilies-of-the-valley. It was more than a sea: it was an ocean of flowers. Towards the horizon, there were forests, and far into the distance a huge mountain. Nowhere where there signs of any human settlements.

As a test, I grabbed my wings again. They still felt real. Either those drugs had been some serious shit, or I really had been transported so far away from the city I couldn't even see roads. It was possible, but still wouldn't explain my sudden metamorphosis.

I buried my head in my hands. I wanted to go back to sleep. Maybe I'd wake up back up home, back to normal and all in one piece. I'd take a month's worth of detention over this shit. Anything that would make this nightmare go away. Anything that would allow me to stop thinking about all this, anything that would make my throbbing head feel better.

"I really don't think this is safe..."

I pricked my ears up and raised my face from my hands. An unfamilir voice. Young, female. Nervous. Very nervous.

"Don't worry, Dai-chan, it's gonna be fine. Besides, it's worth the risk." Another stranger. Infinitely more enthusiastic and optimistic than the first. I looked around but couldn't see its owner. Then, I finally realised the voices were coming from above...

"Yeah, but what if she sees us? I don't want to be poisoned..." the first voice replied, and I could finally see who the speaker was as the mysterious duo descended from the skies: a young girl with a green ponytail on one side of her head, wearing a dress the colour of forget-me-nots. She had wings. I really wished she didn't. I really wished I stopped seeing impossible things.

"Don't worry," her partner said, grinning. She had short blue hair and wings that looked like shards of ice sticking from her back. "I'll just kick her butt and-" she fell silent as soon she clapped her eyes on me.

"Hey, it looks like someone's beaten us to it," she continued. She landed right in front of me and placed her hands on her hips. "Who're you?"

I took a step backwards. I didn't even mean to. I certainly wasn't intimidated by this fairy in front of me, no matter how she glared at me. It was almost as if my strange new body had a will of its own. The other fairy had landed by now, and also stared at me with curiosity.

"Well?" the blue fairy repeated, pulling a face.

"I'm..." my voice sounded so annoying and shrill even to my own ears. I didn't understand how the two of them could stand it.

Then it hit me. A realisation far worse than anything since I had woken up as a fairy.

I had forgotten my name.

Shouldn't that be impossible? How could I forget the thing that made me me? I racked my brain for memories that might help.

There was that morning at the railway station...meeting with the mysterious stranger...and..oh god, what else had there been? Lying awake during the night, staring at the wall...something like that anyway...there had been school...there were some blurry memories of other people, maybe my friends and family...but as soon as I tried to grasp the memories, they floated further away, until they were but faint images hopelessly beyond my reach.

The more I tried to remember, the worse my headache got. There were stars in my eyes, but I couldn't give up. I had to know...there must have been something I could use as a leverage...

Who was I?

I must have looked ridiculous, standing in place with my mouth hanging open for so long, because the fairy called Dai-chan tilted her head and said: "I think you scared her, Cirno."

"What?" the one called Cirno said. "I just asked her who she is."

"I know, but..." Dai-chan took a step forward and gave me a reassuring smile. "It's okay, she's not really mad at you. We just didn't think there'd be anyone else here."

"Why not?" I heard myself asking. For some reason, just focusing on the conversation made me feel so much better. I knew I had to keep thinking if i didn't want t lose myself completely, but a little break was probably fine.

"Because hardly anyone comes here nowadays," Dai-chan continued. "I mean, we come here sometimes, and other fairies do too, and sometimes there's a ghost or two hanging around...but most of the time, it's just her..."

"Her?" I asked.

"Yeah," Cirno chimed in. "And when we saw you we thought you'd had the same idea for a prank as we did, so."

"Prank?"

"Yup!" Cirno beamed with pride. "We're gonna grab a bunch of flowers and shower then on the Hakurei Shrine's courtyard, 'cause it's Reimu's birthday. It's like a prank and a gift at the same time! Clever, isn't it?"

"Uh, sure." I said. It seemed to work, because she grinned at me.

"We really should hurry, though," Dai-chan said, her eyes darting around nervously. "Medicine Melancholy doesn't like it when we pick up flowers here."

"Who's that?"

Cirno shrugged. "She's this youkai who lives here. Dai-chan thinks she's scary. You don't have anything to fear from her, she probably likes lily-of-the-valley fairies."

Fairies. That got my mind working again. After all, there had been something very important I had to think about.

My mind drew blank. It had something to do with a blonde-haired lady, that I knew for sure.

"Hey," I said. "do you know anyone with long blonde hair that smiles a lot?"

Cirno and Dai-chan looked at each other. "You're gonna have to be a lot more specific," Cirno said.

"Umm..." Thinking made my head hurt. "I think she has a parasol. And a really pretty dress."

"Yukari Yakumo, maybe?" Dai-chan said after a brief hesitation.

"What's she like?"

"She's really strong," Cirno said, nodding as she spoke. "and she plays pranks on people too, but she never gets punished even if she gets caught. I'm going too be as strong as her one day, and play all the pranks I want." She grinned. "Speaking of which, we should grab those flowers and scram. Wanna come along?"

"Umm..." Both Cirno and Dai-chan smiled at me brightly. I couldn't refuse. "Yeah, that sounds like fun."

"Great!" Cirno raised her hands towards the sky. "I'm Cirno, by the way. And that's Daiyousei," she added, pointing at her friend.

"You can call me Dai-chan if you want," Daiyousei said. Her smile was really kind.

"Okay, Dai-chan," I replied. "I'm Alraune. Nice to meet you."

I paused. Something was nagging at me in the back of my head. Was that really my name? But it had come out so easily, it must have been.

Both Cirno and Dai-chan took it in stride, anyway.

"Okay, Al-chan," Cirno said without missing a beat. "Grab as many flowers as you can before Medicine shows up, 'kay?"

"Right!" I saluted and got down to business, gathering as many lilies-of-the-valley as I could. I was so nice having new friends.

And yet, something felt funny. I couldn't quite put my finger on it. Hopefully the feeling would pass after a while. Maybe if I took a nap after our prank or something.

For now, I kept collecting flowers, competing with Cirno and Dai-chan to see who could gather the most before we had to go. It was a beautiful day, and this was going to be so much fun...

If only I could remember what had bothered me...

* * *

_"I do wonder..." Yukari murmured, examining her most recent prey. "more often than not, my special guests die so soon...Maybe, if I were to adapt your body and mind to your future surroundings beforehand, the fun would last longer?"_

_Her smile grew wider. "It's certainly worth a try..."_

_**THE END**_


End file.
